Transcripts For SFGTV MTA Board Of Directors 111516 20161127

Agenda. We do have several members of the public who have indicated their interest in speaking with you on matters not on todays agenda starting with eileen boaken. Good afternoon. Okay. [inaudible] okay. I will explain to you. I am a terraval neighbor. The California Traffic Control Devices Committee will be meeting in several weeks. Mike sal bury of mta is a Voting Member on the committee. At its march 3, 2016 meeting the committee was presented with a request for experimentation which involved cross hatchings on the pavement to mark certain transit stops taraval. The committee was unwilling to approve this because other municipalities use cross hatchings to mark no traffic area. Instead they endorsed the wording on the pavement. Although this would increase visibility on the stops, the hilly train frequently dense fog and large number of people that speak english as a second language make this less than ideal. I recommended a speed hump and images and historic images of the streetcar. On the overhead which you cant see are images of the streetcar on the inbound side of the boarding platform at the station so youre already working on this concept so our proposal is along these same lines. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please, will be all right. Jonathan deerenberg. Followed by mark gruberg. Hello. I want to say thank you for vision zero and transit first policy so i think its really important in my comments coming because i recognize youre a leader. The second point i have is with valencia street and the problem with the bike lanes and double parked there so my question there is a center lane in the middle illegally used for parking and why cant it be absorbed on the edges for a bike lane. The second is in regards to enforcement so youre away of sfmta focus on five and makes a lot of sense. I have your enforcement data and you guys i think need the same thing. I am looking at the highest percentage of citations and 32 for street cleaning [inaudible] and parking meter violations eight and dog [inaudible] none of seem like major safety issues. I agree theyre important. Double parking 2 . Parking bike lanes negligible and why cant we have similar and blorking and fire hydrants and i dont know and do a study and have them the priorities for the parking control officers. I know revenue is a big deal even if you dont admit it and you can go down the street and to the mission and give tickets and [inaudible] revert to other things but i would like a focus on that or something equivalent. Thank you. Next speaker please. [calling speaker names] good afternoon. Good afternoon directors, mark gruberg and i am here speaking for myself. I wanted to follow up on several remarks i made at your last meeting about the proposal to begin selling taxi medallions to wln that would be willing to purchase one. I made the point it wasnt realistic and it was too high for people to buy so i wanted to address the question if this isnt going to work what is the harm in trying . And i believe there is harm because the San Francisco taxi industry has always been a local industry. If you look at San Francisco Cab Companies most are owned and run by people who were former or are present taxi drivers, and were now looking at a prospect of possibly if this program were to be successful handing this over to we dont know. We dont know what their plans or ideas are, and i think this needs to be kept local, and the other thing is that the drivers requirement that medallion holders now have to comply with would also be dropped in this new plan and i think thats a bad idea because if this plan does not work youre going to need to go on to plan b, and the driving requirement could be a really important component of any future plan that you might adopt, and if you drop that now and if you start selling medallions to outsiders now those are two ideas, two things that are going to be very hard to recoup in any future plan. Once you drop them theyre gone so again i urge you not to do it. Thank you. Next speaker please. [calling speaker names] good afternoon directors. I am a taxi driver. Last night when i was driving for 12 hours i am giving this receipt coming out of the meter that tell you in 12 hours and after expense i made 25 only as a taxi. Thats one thing to start. [inaudible] taxi meter and imposed us had a serious problem times when i am driving around and the price for the cab and disappeared from the screen. 20 times the meter went into a blank position when there was no customer. Two times the meter got frozen. Several times the price changed from 350 start to 250 and 55cent increment to 25 cents. Why do i have to come talk to you . I sent you emails. I beg you request you and there are many drivers but the companies are telling us shut your mouth. Get out of us. We dont want you because i am complaining on these issues. Coming to the taxi task force in last two year i mention to you three times. Taxy task force was designed to have six driveros it. Instead of six drivers [inaudible] acted as a bully and gave all seats to the medallion holders. What kind of ethics is this . And the employees and do this. We need six drivers on the board, not the six medallion drivers and the task force has them please and the cabs its already an issue in front of them for one year and now she postponed for and the top light can be and shes not doing it and favoring a particular taxicab company and can you look at it and get her out of the job before thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please. [calling speaker names] those are the last people that have turned in a speaker card on matters of the jurisdiction and not on todays agenda. I am wondering does the board get irritated about bikers riding on the sidewalk . Its illegal and against the law and its a real irritation, and i would like to make a request especially to the supervisors that serve on the board and the whole board for that matter. When you see someone riding on the street will you please tell them its illegal to do it. I have been doing it now. I have been yelling at people that go through the red light. I requested people on the board do it because its a real Public Service. Its annoying that the people are breaking the law. They run over people on the sidewalk and its only going to be a matter of time before people on bikes that do will get beaten to a pulp so to prevent bloodshed and do a Public Service will you please take this into consideration. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please. [calling speaker names] good afternoon. Chairman nolan good afternoon. Directors good afternoon. Im marcela. I have been a member of the taxi industry for 28 years almost. Even though Assembly Bill 2763 passed Assembly Bill ab828 did not. As you know Assembly Bill 2763 defines personal vehicle, leased vehicles as personal vehicles. However, ab828 failed to exempt tmcs from registering with the dmv and that law every vehicle engaged in commercial activity part time or full time that law remains. The San Francisco examiner has reported 45,000 tmcs operating in the city and county of San Francisco. With the passage of 2763 its safe to assume that they will allow open entry of more vehicles to flood our streets so i am here today to urge you to play more of a role with the puc. We in the taxi industry feel that you have failed us over and over again to play more of a role with the puc. No one will be able to make a living if we reach that number of 100,000 vehicles for hire in the city of San Francisco and also with the law that every vehicle engaged in commercial activities should register commercially who is going to enforce that . So i would like you to address that as well. Thank you sir. Thank you. Next speaker please. Pat followed by peter and tom. Hi. Sorry to have to be here i guess to complain. Bicycles on the sidewalks. I have been hit twice. It hurts. It causes disability and the riders ride off. You go down in certain neighborhoods it is a nightmare. I am afraid to walk in the city and i have lived here for 42 years. I am getting older and injured. I took a bus yesterday and got injured because the bus driver wouldnt do her job. This is ridiculous. There are people that live in the city who arent young and dont ride bicycles and dont have a lot of money to take ubers and things. I have asked repeatedly that the mta or db tor whoever takes responsibility and monitors the chair on the and on Market Street they stage and parked for 15 minutes, 20 minutes at a time. They turn the corner in front of ada Howard Street and paused i have timed them and they are blocking the bicycle lane there and theyre blocking access to the bus stop thats right adjacent to ada howard. Doesnt seem to be a priority with muni. Additional ubers. I take paratransit and my costs have gone up because ubers are constantly blocking the street. They do illegal uturns. Somebodies that to decide in the city there is something called enforcement and its not a bad thing always. It can help other people and people are you know i think thats part of the reason people dont vote for certain things with the city. We got tired. Its too dangerous. Thank you. Next speaker please. [calling speaker names] those are the last two speaker cards on this section. [inaudible] [off mic] mr. Warfield. Peter warfield executive director of Library Users association. I hope you would use the three minutes that sunshine requires for Public Comment and not two. Basically two things. I would like to agree with the previous speaker of the dangers of bicycles which i dont think are sufficiently noted in any sense including in statistics with regard to bicycle injuries. We know even the pedestrian bicycle contention can cause pedestrian can result in pedestrian death. To back up a little bit on october 14 i went to a meeting sponsored by this body i believe on intended to collect information from the public, and i asked three different sets of people on that day for three separate and distinctly different pretty basic stuff like the person giving the presentation. I would like a copy of the presentation. Two weeks went by and i heard nothing from anybody. I dont think thats the kind of responsiveness especially from the people that are supposed to be responsive to the public i dont think thats appropriate, and i am sadly finding in other respects the agency is not responsive as it should be and even as its legally required to be in some cases. I wish that would improve and i am sure you can hear other stories from others about it. With respect to the statistics i dug out from the agency i am very dur prized there are no is surprise thrd are no demographic details and what constitutes a collision and especially when you have high injury corridors what is causing the problem . How you can effectively make safer streets if you dont know whether it was a pedestrian and a bus or a pedestrian and a bike and so on . And i think that thats a serious problem with your statistics collecting and other gaing and keeping. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please. [calling speaker names] is mr. Dufty here for general Public Comment on a matter not on the agenda . [inaudible] [off mic] okay. Thank you. Tom [inaudible] [off mic] on the embarcadero right [inaudible] [off mic] right next to thank you. Deantsy street and a bicycle on the sidewalk and its scary when they come up behind and dont hear and especially with a wheelchair and natural with the gutter and takes a brake and slides into and commissioner reiskin. Might as well call john ram. They did a presentation on pier 70 and theyre thinking of 3foot to maybe 6foot water rise in the bay. I told them in a presentation here they expect you guys were told a 9foot surge so you may want to call john on that. Excuse me. I dont have an online presence. I heard that uber may the online sharing may have a wheelchair. I dont know about that. Im waiting to hear that. Otherwise i mean its a disaster. Were losing our taxis and getting nothing. Again on van ness as on taraval why not do a and b . We have a 49, a 47. They can stop at all of the stops. Each line does half of the stops. We get our speed up and all of the stops covered. Taxis commissioner ubers and we need insurance and theyre covered only if you have people in the car. Its ridiculous especially when theyre on the phone all the time. The passes and the fast pass for everyone that gets on and off the bus. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker card. Last speaker to turn in a card within the matter of the mta but not on the agenda. Good afternoon. I live nearby. I want to agree with the speakers. I think theres a lot of things that are lost underneath the cracks right now that the mta is not being responsive for. In particular my list would include the red zones, parking removal, the taxi cab system, the problems with uber and lyft and the google buses, and in particular the taxicab system. We had a world class system. It was different than every other system. You got your seniority. You eventually get a medallion. What it is now when you buy a medallion theyre financed by banks so that means about half of the cost of the medallion goes to a bank and winds up in a mcmansion in north colorado somewhere and its just disappears, so i am particularly disturbed how our taxi system has just collapsed. Its just been deteriorated. Anyone else to address the board under Public Comment . Seeing none i would like to speak a little bit somebody else . I would like to speak about bicycles on the sidewalks too. [inaudible] [off mic] im sorry. About bicycles on the sidewalks. I am increasingly concerned about that myself. I think its a big problem and we had a report on that at any point they can recall and ask for the Board Members consent to have the director come back and especially if there are best practices established around the country and instructive to us around the country or elsewhere how to deal with this. Some jurisdictions it appears to me it doesnt matter, the russian river, guerneville and doesnt matter and rides on sidewalks and other places but its a concern for me personally. I have been close to be hit on two different occasions in the last months and something needs to be done. Director ramos. Thank you mr. Chairman and thank you for all of the comments. I think theyre very poignant and something were taking note of. With respect to especially the comments around focus on the five and rp co enforcing things that really do contribute to a safer city i would love to be able to hear or to get a better understanding of what how theyre instructed to go about their enforcement efforts, and i am speaking from a place of experience in seeing how disruptive especially the tmcs have been on our streets with their double parking, with their slow cruising looking for the passages to pick up and not only does it well, it especially makes things terrible for the transit system. It makes things terrible for the people just trying to get around in the car, just the flow of the Transportation Networks, and then of course it makes things especially dangerous for bicyclists which then makes them feel less safe than they already feel just without having to negotiate around a potentially moving car that might stop anytime and what have you and pushes them on to the sidewalk and a lot of the reason speaking from experience, and seeing this happen all the time a lot of the reason people ride on the sidewalks we dont have the infrastructure to make them feel safe on the street so the best strategy to getting people off the sidewalks is getting them infrastructure that would provide them with a safe passage so they can feel safe on the street. This is especially pertains to people of color. Its really challenging to ride a bicycle and feel safe coming from a perspective where youre already feeling oppressed frankly just because of ones color in a system where we seen so much racism and especially coming out of this Current Administration already unfortunately, so i would really love to see us at this point have a deeper longer broader discussion about this issue, both with respect how do we get bicyclists off the sidewalk and of course how were policing our the double parking and the training those folks get because its my assumption a lot are driving from out of town and coming from out of town as uber and lyft drivers what you have and in oakland i saw so many of these cars parked to indicate theres not a lot of cars in oakland driving around and picking up fares what have you so its my assumption a lot are coming from out of town. They dont know the extent of the issue and the implications of them doing this and whatever the taxi industry has done to help their drivers understand how this impacts the rest of the city is something they think the mtmc should take note of. Director. Yes, you might want to enforce what can be done as pd deals with moving violations and they cant. We would include a broader discussion of enforcement for this issue because it just isnt the p cos are limited in what they can do. I think one of the drivers said this and light issue with fly wheel and the light doesnt go off apparently on the taxis. Yeah, we based on some of the comments received have a lot of discussions with fly wheel including the people commenting have been invited to so we will continue to work on the issues but by and large its working best in the taxi industry right now. Thank you. Anyone else . Okay. Thank you ms. Boomer. Moving on to the consent calendar. All items are considered routine nltion a member of the public or board wishes to have it severd and considered separately. Mr. Chairman i received no indication that the public wants an item to be separate. Do we have a motion . Thank you very much. [inaudible] moving on the category calendar of the commuter shuttle medyear status report and commuter shuttle hub study. [inaudible] low audio . Good afternoon. Good afternoon chair nolan and directors. I am sara jones, planning director at sfmta. Were here today to talk about two items which are particularly timely given all of the discussion today about handling some is of the changing modes and systems of transportation in our city. Were talking about the Commuter Shuttle Program. Today were presenting the medyear status report and a study jointly by the sf cta and sfmta on a program that would concentrate commuter shuttle stops at a small number of locations termed hubs in the city instead of providing a network of stops in the city. Both yps were requested by this board last winter after interest was expressed by the board of supervisors when they heard the appeal of the environmental determination for the Commuter Shuttle Program approved by this board. The items presented first we have staff that manages the Commuter Shuttle Program at mta and present the results of her teams work establishing and running this program and second for the commuter shuttle hub study we have the benefit of the research and thal nal expertise as well as mtas on the ground perspective about shuttles and the Transportation Network so we will have the ta helping out with presenting this item. Jeff hobson the Deputy Director of present the results of that analysis so i will turn it over to francesca. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon board of directors. My name is francesca and the manager of the Commuter Shuttle Program. I am here to share the results of the six month evaluation of the current Commuter Shuttle Program. So shuttles have been operating on our streets for over a decade and many of the services have ground out of Silicon Valley employers and the requirements around the jurisdictions around mode trip and cap requirements and given that services will remain on the streets and playing a row in reducing vehicle mile it is traveled and green apple books emissions. These entities are licensed at the state level and allowed on the streets and prior to the sfmtas implementation of the Commuter Shuttle Program the city had limited authority to manage these vehicles. As a result prior to regulation shutels were free and did operate on almost all city streets including smaller residential streets. They loaded and unloaded at over 250 locations including muni zones which resulted in delays to muni. In response the sfmta created the pilot Commuter Shuttle Program and approved by this board in january 2014 and ran from august 2014 to january 2016. After evaluating the pilot programs the Current Program was proposed and adopted by this board in november 2015 and launched at the start of april of this year. So why a Commuter Shuttle Program . As noted these entity legally a allowed on the streets and the by the program the city has a tool to manage operations and addressing neighborhood concerns and large vehicles on small streets and also a tool to minimize conflicts with other users and muni buzzes and cyclists. The evaluation the program helped form the program today. Key components in the Current Programmed include restricting vehicle 35 length or greater to caltrans designatedar torial streets requiring vehicles in the program to meet at minimum 2012 emission standards or better and increasing the number of force officers dedicated to monitoring and enforcing the program. Since these vehicles are allowed on our streets participation in the program is voluntary. However, by participating operators gain access to a set of designated zones throughout the city. The program is a Cost Recovery program and operators currently pay 7. 31 each time they spot and agreed to about by terms and conditions which includes but not limited to providing sfmta with continuous gpa tracking data for their vehicles following operational protocols at stops and having labor harmony. Since the pilot we have seen a 15 increase in ridership. We have seen increase in the number of shuttle vehicles on the street each day. During the vehicle it was 300 vehicles and today its 360 to 390 vehicles on the streets. However at the same time we see the total stops remain constant from the pilot, on average 3200 stops a day. Like i mentioned a key component of the Current Program is restricting large vehicles that caltrans designated arterial streets. This map illustrates how through the rule we reduced greatly the proportion of San Francisco streets that the vehicles can travel on. And hayes street is one example where we see this policy working. Prior to the implementation of the Current Program hayes street was a popular shuttle route however under the Program Large vehicles are not allowed on the street. Through gps tracking staff can identify anytime a large vehicle travelos this street and issue a fine. The dots in this graphic represent the presence of large vehicles on hayes street. At at start of the program we saw on average 195 vehicles there each day and by august it dropped to 15 vehicles per day. Currently we have a total of 110 shutel zones throughout the city and 12 decrease in the pilot. Sfmta has shifted away from shared minizones to white zones to remove conflicts muni and removed from non arterials and few remain for vehicles less than 35 in length and allowed to travel on these streets. In order to help reduce environmental impacts of shetel vehicle we require all new vehicles to meet 2012 erkts mission standards or better. As a result the percentage of the fleet that meet this is requirement has increased from 59 to 76 . Stop fees paid by the operators cover the enforcement team. On average parking control officers issue citation a month and 129 per cent increase from the pilot and equates to 29,000 a month in citation revenue and 173 increase from the pilot. Utilizing gps data staff can determine when a vehicle travelos a restricted street the arterial or weight restricted street. For each violation theyre subject to a 250 fine. Thus far we have issued over 500,000 in fines. However, the intention of these fines is not to make money but rather to move shuttles off of restricted sheet streets. In the graph there is a noticeable decline of the fines and impacting behavior and improving compliance. On average staff receive between 20 and 30 complaints a month of the program and on par of the pilot and during the pilot the focus was of large vehicles on small streets and while we still have some complaints like that it transferred to loading double parking and unpermitted shuttles. We log in each complaint and share with the operators and our parking control officers. We have used the feedback to adjust the program where appropriate. One such area was a stop at goth and bush which you heard about a number of times where there was severe over crowding and identified a number of locations along that corridor to reduce the impacts on neighbors at that location. While the data analyzed shows that this program is having a positive impact on helping to minimize the impacts of shuttleos our streets there is still areas for further refinement. Theres a discontinuity in the network and areas such as the mission with large amount of riders and has created large volume of shuffle volume along corridor and burden the people in the area. In addition while we increased the enforcement officers dedicated to program its still not possible to cover the entire network on a given day and thus were constantly shifting the resources around the city. Lastly there have been suggestions by policy makers there might be a better model of managing this than a hub model. Staff will continue to work with enforcement and address needs and changes on the ground. We will evaluate the Shuttle Network and minimize impact toss residents andad quat coverage. And look at data capability to seen sure that the rules are followed of the program and evaluate how the program is working. This program is authorized through march 31 of next year. We willing economic back to the board coming bag to the board with a proposal for the program. So far this program is working. Within six months we reduced muni conflicts and decrease the number of stops in these zones by 25 , reduced the number of shuttles on smaller streets by 91 , and the of clean incomes up to 76 . We are you duced potential for labor [inaudible] and have a labor harmony plan and through increased enforcement we have been able to better enforce the rules and regulations of the program. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right and im going to directly pass it off to [inaudible] [off mic] good afternoon. Good afternoon directors. I am jeb hobson the Deputy Director for planning at the San Francisco Municipal Planning Authority and we have staff here in case you have detailed technical questions because she did a lot more of the analysis than i did, so you folks are oops wrong side. I think a lot of you are quite familiar with the background of this program. You approved the current Commuter Shuttle Program a year ago and in february asked your staff to work with those of us at the Transportation Authority to Work Together to do the hub study so were doing the study to respond to concerns of the commuter shuttles and meet the goals of the program you established and reduce impacts on those residential neighborhoods. So this slide shows you the six goals that the Commuter Shuttle Program has had since its outset, those are the top six, probably hard for people in the audience to see, so i will go ahead and read those out and i believe there are copies of it up here as well. The six goals are to minimize adverse effects on muni, integrate the shuffles into the system, promote safety, goals around employer and operator perceptions, address the potential for expansion and address enforcement needs. This study, this commuter shuttle hub study adds one more which is minimize operations in residential neighborhoods to reduce the overall footprint of the system. So to do that one of the first things that we did was ask for public input. We put out a call for suggestions of places that there could be hubs throughout the city, and that call was open for about a year during june and july of this year. We did that outreach via mta maintains a mailing list of people that expressed interest in the Commuter Shuttle Program and the board of supervisors shared it with their constituents and significant News Coverage that we think drove people to the site where you could put in suggestions. We got over 1600 responses that you could see on this map here representing nearly 400 locations, unique different locations within the city limits much the red dots up in the marina just south of market at the caltrain depot in the Outer Mission and glen park. Those five were the post popular suggestions throughout so we took the responses and the locations where the commuter shuttle already the existing system already had stops and we established five key criteria to figure out how to really design the hub scenarios, so you can see the five criteria listed here. I am happy to go into more detail on any of them if you would like, but we use the screening criteria to identify locations that would both support those goals of the hub system that we mentioned a couple of slides ago and also to accommodate the existing ridership, so in order to qualify for the analysis in this program any location we looked had to meet all five of these criteria, and so we put those together into four different scenarios that are intended to represent the range of different possible scenarios that we could that mta could adopt. These were not intended to be something that would be plug and play. You would take this straight to ceqa review and intended to be scenarios to explore what options would be like so we went from a single downtown hub and used the area around the temporary trans bay terminal as the example for that even though it has significant constraints on actually being able to be used but we wanted to look at a single hub and that was the one that seemed most likely to perform well. We looked at concentrating orienting hubs around the bark network to be easy to get to and on the five criteria we had. We looked at a freeway adjacent scenario to design for freeway access to minimize the travel that any of the shuttles would have on San Francisco surface streets and lastly we had the consolidate the network that took the program that was just described and consolidate those to stops that would qualify for the criteria and create a set of several routes for the commuter shuttle system. So thats all the set up, and this is i think really the main results of our analysis. We have several others but let me take a moment to talk about the methodology. A gee part of this analysis was to predict how shuttles riders change in these scenarios so to do that i and think thats one of the most significant reasons us at the Transportation Authority were involved we use the data and assumptions about mode choices from the sf champ model that we used to do all of the travel demand modeling in the city. We used some information from google maps api about how long trips take to make the predictions about what people would do if you put a hub system in place, and so this graph is really the heart of the analysis. On the left is the Current Program. It shows at the time we did the analysis we had 8200 current shuttle riders who rode intercity routes, not just within San Francisco but take a shuttle that leaves the city, so on the left is the Current Program and on the right four sets of bars are the four scenarios that show what people would do, and as you can see our model predicts that 24 to 45 of the current shuttle riders would stop riding shuttles and instead get to work another way. The vast majority of those would drive instead of riding transit. So the result of that would be 1800 to 3300 more cars on the road, and that of course would have a significant result on how much driving and ghg emissions we would end up so again it has the Current Program on the left, the scenarios on the right. As notes on the bottom we would have a significant decrease in the number of miles of driving on San Francisco streets by shuttles but that would be offset completely off threat set by off set by passenger vehicle of people riding shuttles and miles of driving would go up by a factor of five to eight and green apple book greenhouse emissions would go up also. So there would be other Significant Impacts. At the Bigger Picture there is a likely Significant Impact on safety. If we have tens of millions of miles of more driving we would expect to have more crashes, injuries and fatalities. On the bright side there would be fewer conflicts between shuttles and muni vehicles and thats of course because we deliberately described these scenarios to have many fewer conflicts by making sure that the huk locations didnt share any of the existing muni stops. Some other impacts we see. This first bullet again shows that the hub scenarios would achieve one of the states goals to reduce shuttle travel significantly on non arterial streets. These are these miles driven would end up being concentrated on hubs we did end up with, and some neighborhoods this is only a measure of non arterial streets. There are areas south of market for example where many of the streets are arterials and significant travel on those depending which scenario was used but those would not be on non arterial streets. Some other impacts. Some would be impacts on parking. All of the scenarios have more competition for available parking and many of the hubs with with all day would see competition for the spaces and most of the scenarios require removing significant amount of onstreet parking in order to make way for the hubs. Last we have to consider how operators would respond. Since there would be fewer authorized stops we expect there would probably be some increased in unauthorized stops. We dont have a way of quantifying that. We just think its our professional judgment is thats likely to happen and that would in tern require more enforcement by the p cos so with that i will turn it back over to sara. Thank you. [inaudible] thank you jeff. So these two pieces taken together are really pointing to us breaking new ground and were feeling very positive about the results of our efforts to regulate commuter shuttles operating on San Francisco sheets. Both of these studies also provide us with very good information for this program as we look to its future. As follow up its my understanding that supervisor wiener today at the board of supervisors is asking for a hearing on this same topic coming forward at the land use and Transportation Committee where we would present these same results, so with that i would wrap up. I am i am happy to take your questions and discuss what was a lot of information shown. Thank you. We will hear from the public and then come back. Ms. Boomer do we have members of the public . Yes we do. [calling speaker names] those are the first three speakers. Thank you. I am bob planthold. These reports show incompleteness and inconsistencies that you need to note, but especially the muni passenger and the problems we encounter are not really highlighted let alone analyzed. Fortunately some of us were able to take pictures last week in the noe valley and showed how the shuttle buses park at a bus stop and muni buses cannot pull in and that means people cannot get the lift deployed to get on and off. They may not see it and get around the crowds in time. That has seen in various places but we documented it in noe valley and publicized in foreign publications because nobody wants to deal with it here at city hall. In the reports there are inconsistencies and different statements and the two massive agency shuttle study when talking about the consolidated network they say [inaudible] could occur at existing stops and could get worse under the proposed scenario. In the commuter shuttle hub study also a different document and page ten all scenarios result in fewer conflicts. One study says more conflicts and the other says different by the same people. I am pointing out you need to think carefully about what is side and youre reading here. I want to go into the aspect for services with people for disabilities because this is critical that if we cant get the service then theres a problem that muni is going need to solve without civil rights litigation complaints that youre favoring the abled body over us. Thank you. Next speaker please. [calling speaker names] good afternoon sir. Hi. Thank you. I live on sanchez and had a bus stop put in front of our house and westbound drop off and four to 8 00 p. M. And a pick up six to 10 00 a. M. And both bus stops are over used with the bus is using the bus stops while after the permitted time slots and in the evenings the bus continue using them up until 1030, 11 00 oclock at night and theres a schedule theres a routine and these buses they seem to have a schedule and its the same buses that run finishing up with bus 05073 at 1030, 11 00 oclock at night, the same buses and i think were at the end of the route, so the buses they often sit and idle for five to ten minutes while the bus drivers check their buses and make sure nothing was left, and thats about a third of the buses that sit and idle. Some of the other issues that we have while these buses are out there some of the buses are theres several buses that block that pull up and double park and use both westbound lanes and theyre also using the other drop off point, the pick off point as a drop off, and its just its not a working situation. It didnt seem to be working very well. I hope you guys will take care of this for us. Thank you. Thank you sir. Next speaker please. Paul quinn followed by George Surrey and michael barrett. Good afternoon mr. Quinn. Hi. I am paul quinn. Greetings to all of you. I have three points to make about the conversation around the shuttle stops and the Shuttle Program. The first one is the planners dont seem to get out much. When we finally found out about the plan to put the shuttle stop in front of our house it wasnt posted in front of our house around the bus stop anywhere. We called up and asked about two things and one was what about the School Across the street right by the bus stop where parents come and go with the cars and children with walking every morning and crowds . They said there will only be eight buses a day. Its not a problem. Well its 80. They said its not in front of the house. Theres a house and then the school. You need to come out and watch. You need to see all the children, all the parents, all the cars at this intersection, and nobody ever thought about came out. I dont think there was ever a study about this, and when we told them about the trees in front of our house and worried about damage to them they said oh there arent any trees in front of your house. They have been there for 20 years and nobody paid any attention so i think its really important that some reality creep into your things like the guy was saying and the increase of car, cant happen, no room in the street. Thank you. Next speaker please. [calling speaker names] good afternoon. Good afternoon. I lived on goth street for about 20 years, a San Francisco resident for 38. I would like to address the concern that modifying corporate bus stops would drive thousands of kowtd muters into the cars and surveys show the results on day one of the restrictions riders would make the choice but i dont believe that the results would be the same. I believe this from relevant experience. I converted for 30 years to my job in santa clara n2000 we did a study for San Francisco Satellite Office of the 7,000 employees in santa clara less than 60 lived in the city, less than 1 . Over the years i knew many lived in the city for a while but ultimately gave up. Commuting this distance is hard but it should be. Why would the mta support a rouge private Transportation System which violates the urban planning model with colocated work sites and housing and encourages shorter travel times, not longer, a model used by the transit and City Planners in support of projects such as the van ness vrt. We have an ongoing solution for the crisis and demand attention focused on the supply but there are demand factors and corp shuttles are one of them and for this decision [inaudible] demand pressure on the scarce San Francisco housing. Stop the corporate buses and eventually employees would move and yes it would take time but it would happen. In mta mind this for these projects. All is justified for the greater good. Shopping the shuttle buses is in that category of the greater good. You have the opportunity to do the right dont just restrain them but stop them and get them out of our neighborhoods. Thank you sir. Next speaker please. [calling speaker names] good afternoon mr. Barrett. Good afternoon board, mr. Reiskin and other directors and the mta. I am here reporting the group that i am proud to be working with which is save muni and we do a lot of work and report to you and all of the authorities at the mta about what we found out. I came today to talk about proposition 11 especially because you have known about all of this going on for three years they know of and thats recorded. We have one person that reports to save muni every week and reports to you all the time about all the movement but like today i overwhelmed by the number of people spoke and the groups reporting to you and you better start doing something about these reports. This whole meeting today reminds me of the two greatest educators i had in college education. One happened toking weapon shake hea William Shakespeare and the other person that impressed me very much related to this meeting was the head of the Economics Department dr. Quirk and said statistics are like mental masturbation i am saying quit ignoring the facts and get to administering as you should these terrible situations. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker please. [calling speaker names] good afternoon. I am with the Bay Area Council as many of you know for many years we have been convening the largest shuffle operators to work with the city with sfmta and ta to complete the studies and the midyear Progress Report shows real progress. The use of shared muni zones is down. The use of non arterial streets is down. The use of vehicles that meet 2012 emission standards are up. Now its important because the stated goal of sfmta is to help maximize the benefits that shuttles provide by minimizing their impacts so clearly progress is being made and i want to be clear on that. On each of these successes though the hub study shows that these could be undone if we move towards shuttle proof and ridership would drof and the equivalent of over 3,000 cars would be on the road to make up the difference and 65 million vehicle miles traveled on the road every here and sfmta and mta lead to increased incidences of,s of all modes and increase of clikdz in general and not collision in general and not removing hundreds of parking spots where the hubs are located that so with that i respectfully ask the board to stick with what is working and the Current Program shows major progress being made. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please. [calling speaker names] good afternoon. The hub study is a valiant effort in a difficult situation and i applaud it, but and i learned from it and a couple of points i will bring up. Im a resident of the noe the much damaged and vulnerable noe valley. Perhaps the first page of the hub study could have been more appropriately this [inaudible] [off mic] on november 7 in the morning at the corner of castro and 24th street. Then further down at the stop which is the one stop in the noe valley now massive congestion and even the shuttle buses oops sorry. The shuttle buses cant tolerate it and theyre passing the crowd, so then on the way back in the evening we have very dangerous turns. This is a bus coming and pushing over the truck and the car that has to move. They have to move over to the right and that is the tracking left by these buses dragging on the corner. Thats castro at 24th. I think theres been i applaud the industry. They have provided a lot of employment. I use google and apple but i think were indulging them to an extreme. Thank you. [inaudible] [off mic] thank you very much. Specialized shuttle buses. Thank you very much. Next speaker. [calling speaker names] good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you. 30 time is the charm. I am georgia and i want to share anecdote similar to the photos that were just showed. Around the same time within two different periods i saw seven buses during the peak and they were half full so thats something to think about in your study. These huge buses half full on the streets. Maybe you know it but i didnt see it in the report. The other thing is about the hub. Has anyone thought of taking uber to the hub . Just a thought. My preference for a hub location was alemanys farmer rz market and cover noe valley and hayes and when i saw the buses half full the muni j was packed and thats the other point. I think its unfortunate that this report hasnt dealt with the connection between the housing cost particularly in noe valley but whole southwest what those ownership and rental. I know that wasnt in your purview but its incredible important issue as someone involved in the issue and its taken off in the last five years and finishing up with my little laundry list of items. There was an sf gate article on november 2 about the cost to drivers of maintenance to their cars because we had the worse roads in the country. 978 a year for poor roadways. People that dont have the shuttle buses have to drive and transfer of wealth and the people taking the shuttles are riding basically for free and making more money for the employees, yes, there has been melding and meeting and compliance and trying to help the city, but i think its an issue to think about without sounding like a socialist. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker please. [calling speaker names] good afternoon. Good afternoon. Go ahead. I live on 24th street in noe valley and i see the nightmare every day of these massive over sized buses that are half full picking up passengers, stopping at muni stops and what do i get out of it . The exhaust. The buses are piling up and i have to breathe the air when i walk down the street and this is something that hasnt been studied. There hasnt been analysis of the impact of the buses environmentally, the effects. Okay. Have you ever considered making a regional Rapid Transit bus system . Stregthening the system to eliminate all of these problems that youre hearing about that the study doesnt even reflect. You hear it time after time. What about a bus . Everybody could take a bus like mr. Whatever his name who lived in who worked outside of the city, and take a different bus, a city bus to get them to work on time. Youre going to hear people that will come up here and boohoo they have to walk an extra block or two and be inconvenienced. Now theyre abled body people. Now what you doing to get around the bus stops . Youre now going to say lets paint white zones. Lets make a white zone like you did on san jose and the valley street. What does that white zone do . It takes away residential Parking Spaces that people have paid for so think about this seriously. The program is not working. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please. [calling speaker names] good afternoon. Hi i am janet lee and specifically looking to talk to item 12 so is that next . Yes. Okay. Thank you. [calling speaker names] good afternoon. Good afternoon commissioners. I sent you a letter so im not going to bother to read that. You have that in your email. I will speak briefly about things that i already heard today which i agree with. My large concern is the large buses, the fact theyre not always full and as you can see causing a lot of congestion on the city streets. First of all 24th street i dont believe is an arterial. I used to live on 24th and noe valley and its a very small street. Its not what i would consider an arterial. I walked on it all the time. It was a very comfortable neighborhood street. 16th street is a very good example of exactly the same thing that happens, the photographs that you saw in noe valley on 24th. I could take photographs. I have taken photographs of basically youre getting ready to well, eliminate a lane or whatever on parts of 16th street and create a complete disaster there. Youve already got a situation where if a bus breaks down and did two weeks in a row and i took photographs basically you cant get passed that street and no way with the configuration the way it is now. Weve had a bus breaking down, a truck in back to repair it right in front of the bus barn on 16th street. Then on the other side the traffic may be moving but if you have an ambulance coming up no way to get through. 24th street connects you with the bay and the rest of the city and you have that under the freeway. Thats the only under the two freeways that you have. This is a major street, so for you to cut any traffic off there or have any kind of shuttle buses or any kind of situation that is over size there is really, really a bad idea. Thank you. Its very unsafe to the public. Thank you. Next speaker please. [calling speaker names] herbert whiner is the last person that submitted a god. Good afternoon. I live at. Goth and we were around a shut paused this is belly up planning. I asked the gentleman dealing with this stuff. Why are we doing this . We must please the shuffle people. Were acting that were so terrified to enforce any kind of legal enforcement as in not impeding the flow of traffic, not block being crosswalks versus the basic Environmental Issues that at my age and some of you are mine age and we learned and talk transit and most are not full and on average are half full. Why are we putting up with the huge buses . Theyre disturbing to neighborhoods. Theyre unsafe. Also this whole idea of setting up a hub thing oh my god we asked them if theyre taking the cars if we didnt give a shuttle 2inches from their house. Of course theyre going to say theyre going to drive. Theyre not stupid. I know thats the answer you guys are afraid of. I think earlier in the Environmental Movement you find other ways to get around. You dont go belly up. Thank you. Next speaker please. [calling speaker names] good afternoon. Know good afternoon commissioners. I am with save muni. I am trying to reach a composite of what people believe. Not everybody is in total agreement but close to what the general feeling is so beginning back in history for many of us for decades have been urging regional, county and city agencies to collect people in g ry [8 oe6]l[d34 to maintain accessibility for people on the buses and people waiting for muni and people on muni to get to the curb for people with disability squz seniors, that is a huge Pedestrian Safety issue and if we slow down a bus, i know the policy about our muni bus gets to pull in if the shuttle is in the spot and shuttle bus needs to pull out but it slows down the muni system so anything we can do to have enforcement of the muni stops for people waiting for the bus and people on the muni bus needs to be prioritized. Imone of our clast commenters brought up we should have accessible buses like the tech shuttle buses should be accessibility and saddens me to hear memberoffs the public saying that tech shuttle people are abled bodies and muni rider erize disabled, that isnt how it should be and an assumption we should live with. Thank you for the good work. I support everything everyone else said. I work frd 10 years at ibm and colleagues that worked for 30 years at ibm i friend who work at hp. People commuted down the peninsula and remember in the first boom how bad the traffic was because there rrp not these shuttles and at that time we didnt have [inaudible] it ishard to separate what degreef traffic is related to that. The shuttles have taken people off the road. People take the buses opposed to driving and stabbed consistency a quarter mile of what we make for the bus stops, consistency so it is consistent in both programs so people who say walking further, it is the sameour bus stoperize closer together than these hub routes for people so think that is also important to note. A couple other things, i think people talk about a common transporitation network. We dont have aport authority. It is nice to say we all Work Together and figure it out and love to see us get to that vision but we as mta cant solve that problem. It is a regional problem that needs to be looked at but at thit time we as a agency i think the best approach we can do is plan for what is happening because this program was born out of the fact the shuttles were happening already. Our program didnt create the Shuttle Program, it preexisted what was happening on the streets. If you look at the report we cut the stops by half. There was 250 different stops around the city, now there are 125 so that is a significant reduction in stops overall since the inception of the program and something to be proud of but for it to be successful we have to look at what is Human Behavior and cant try to make people do things they dont dowe have to look at patterns of how people get around and i think that is important with these networks. Obviously the issue around enforcement is a big challenge and looking at the list, the opportunity to look at the top 5 things pco and officer cz enforce is where we can get more folkess on the issue because we do need to do that. I think this report was very well need jd think it goes through the key issues we needed to look at for making decisions in the future. I think my colleagues have covered this well. Thank you for the reports and good comments. There is interesting feedback that is fornt going forward. Within the existing Program Parameters strepthening enforcement will go a long way to making the ish oo as better to deal with. I had a question on the slide about the admin fees for travel and restricted streets. Is that vehicles traveling on restricted streets and paying a penalty or authorized to be on restrictive streets . Sure, so in response to your question, one the key elements of this program is vehicles that are 35 feet in length or greater are not allowed on nonarterial streets. The other type of restrictions we are that are city restrictions are weight restricted streets as well as a number of passenger persons in a vehicle so those are separate from the program but track those because large shutm vehicles are in excess of many of the weight restriction. They can be charged a fine for trabling on the streetss. If i have 14 thousand in penaltiesif these vehicles know their are gps track jd know they will get fines so is this something where they make the decision it is worth the fine to take the route or just make a wrong turn . It is a combination of different things. Sometimes there are legitimate reasons for deviations own the restricted streetss and some are result of Police Activity and constructions where they are direct today dathat and in those cases we will wave the fees because that was something that was outside of the operators control. Sometimes it is considered the cost of doing business to operators to stay on a path of travel that they prefer to go on so we have been working on obviously trying to talk to operators to figure how to redo their routes. I think you will see from the graphic that it was quite significant in april and has been on a downward trajectory for all of us both from the staff side as well as the operator side, it a learning process and a lot of them had to redo their routes and retrain driver jz so in the beginning we saw a lot more of issues traveling on a network because a driver in the field may not realize without training making a left hand turn can put them on a restricted street. A lot of this is through education with operators and drivers to make sure they know what streets they are allowed on and not allowed on. Thats great. It sounds like a lot of complaints are about vehicles staying too long or not where they should be or too many being at a place they are assigned to at a given time so just correcting that alone will be a big step. Generally i support the program and think it is a positive step. Thank you. Just a couple things. One of the very first slides talked about shuttles in San Francisco license at the state legalying allowed in San Francisco straets. Can you talk about that . We have shuttles in the city for decades. Yes, the knhun t Commuter Shuttle Program is about regulating how shuttles stop to pick up and drop oppassengers. We really cannot limit particular types of vehicles from traveling on the streets or operating and shuttle vehicles have Legal Options for their loading activities without the commuter shult Shuttle Program but they are limit. The Commuter Shuttle Program is about managing the curb space and not the vehicles. Is there a option suggested is get rid the shuttles. That isnt in the purview of the agency to consider that . That isnt something we can do. What is oversighti think people hp members of the board talked about a changing pral. We are not taking a action today but the board will have a hearing and back in march for action. Thank you for coming out this afternoon and have a short break. Thank you. Ask you to call item 12 and 13 together. Item 12 transporication code transit only lanes on 7th between mission and Market Street. Approve the 19 polk stop changes and various parking and traffic modification along 7th between market and cleveland street. I wont read all the traffic modifications into had report. Suffice to say they are listed in the agenda. Item 13, approve a protected parking protected bike way and park and traffic modification on 8th street between marth and harrison street and wont read through every single parking and traffic modification, they are all listed on the agenda. Thank you very much. Mr. Mcguire. Good afternoon. Tom mcguires sustainable streets, mta. Next week will be the 5 month anniversary of june 22, the day in which two cyclist were killed on the streets of San Francisco within a few hours of each other. Heather miller and kate flattery. August 4 mayor lee challenged mta and other city departments to respond not to those two deaths but continuing number of traffic deaths in San Francisco with executive director on bike safety and vision zireo. There were a number of specific goals he set for us in the directive. One of the most important i think was the challenge to deliver 3 parking protected bike lanes within 9 months. The items before you today, 12 and 13 are two of those three. This is a opportunity to legislate those very important projects that respond to the challenge the mayor has given us and which all the leadership of the city has given us through the vision zero commitment. 7th and howard is the intersection where kate flattery was killed. This scaimportant psychoing corridor and the item before you today will put a parking protected bike lane on the street where thousands of cyclist ride each week and provide with additional level of physical protection. Something the cycling stakeholders ask time and time again t. Also bids on the work of the safer Market Street project, which you may remember when we legislated that back last summer banned many turns along the Market Street corridor working from had principle on the highest pedestrian street, reducing conflicts between turning vehicle jz pedestrians advance Pedestrian Safety and see elementoffs the plan include reroute of the 19th polk to remove left turn at 7th and market and right turn further west. The changes will continue to advance the goals of safer Market Street and reduce conflicts between vehicle jz pedestrians. As the staff who have put this project together have work would all the important stakeholders along this corridor including flunting land owners, San Francisco Fire Department, colleagues within transit, we have tried to link the design rfts that my colleague will go through in a moment with munis collision reduction program, Fire Department operational needs and with some of the real operational access needs of the hotels along the corridor. What we are asking for today is approval of legislation of the two really important parking protected bike lanes that will help achieve the vision zero goals and foin to work with all the stakeholders on the issues like dimension of curb lanes and access to buildingings and all the operational thijs our engineer work with. With that i will turn it over to will [inaudible] who will walk you dlou the 7th and 8th street protected bike lanes. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Will taub honda with sustainable streets division. So, to reiterate, the mayors executive drether asked to improve bicekling on 7th and 8th street and what we areprinted this afternoon is the first phase of improvements. What is shown in green along 7th between market and cleveland and on 8th street between market and harrison are these parking protected facilities that people are asking for and need to help make the streets safer. Subsequent to the legislation and our timeline to implement the project within 9 months we design to address harrison and towns end to continue the facilities and make a corridor wide parking protected facility. The project goals are to increase safety and comfort for all users of the street. Saebth and 8ths street is multimodal corridor and see a lot of people taking transit and driving and these are photos of what people are experiencing. Sometimes bike lanes are blocked and sometimes the narrow sidewalkerize also congested so what the project aims to do is improve transportation across all modes specifically these project corridors have seen collisions along the stretch, along saevlth street there are 97 collisions 19 involving bicyclist and 30 with pedestrians with one fatality in addition to the bike fatality at [inaudible] nob. 35 involving pedestrians. So, it is a important safety goal for us to improve the streets as well as comfort goal. So, the key consideration is how to get where we are with what we pr presenting. There is a Community Vision for the area that helped developed by the Planning Department and sfmta called eastern neighborhood transportation improvement planning study that outlined alternatives for the corridor and transit and biking and pedestrian improvements coinside with the preferred alternative of the planning study. It helps achieve the vision zero goals and achieve goals of meeting pedestrian and bicycling safety. This project is helping walk towards vision zero. 12 percent of collisions are seen on12 percent of our network sees 70 percent of collisions. We are trying to work towards vision zero and the projects provide a opportunity to achieve that goal and will walk through improvements that will help achieve that. In the near term what we are asking for consideration on is parking protected bike way. This is a example on 13th street near soma street food. It is where we move the bike lane close toor the curb to provide the additional level of protection for people traveling along these streets. Transportation projects like this have been done in multiple cities in the u. S. And had a slnt Safety Record particularly in new york with installations such as these have seen injury collisions being reduced by 40 percent across all modes. Improvements like these are not just benefit bicyclist but roadway users. Along 7th street to be able to accommodate the space needed for the parking protected bike way we propose to remove a lane of traffic and implement a road diet. Road diets help slow speeds along the corridor and help reduce exposure to pudesrens crossing at the crossings. Alaupg with the improvements at intersection we implementing daylighting where the parking approaching intersections to make sure everyone has good visibility of one another and planning upgrading those with painted safety zone jz help reduce turning speeds and just enforce these spaces are meant to be clear. In terms of bicycling enhancement, we propose the mixing zones at right turning pocket areas where vehicles who are turning right have good visibility of bicyclists and directed to yield to the bicyclist. This type of treatment has seen Good Behavior safety and believe this is a good solution for addressing the near term problems especially given our timeline. Along with these there are several transit improvements so along the corridor with stop frz the 19th polk we propose transit boarding islands that help the bus not have to go to the curb so improves the reliability of 19th polk, but it also helps relieve conjugz on the sidewalks. It is doubling the sidewalk with Pedestrian Access base at these locations. The 19th polk along thes corridor this is north bound at 7th street and stops at mission and the dotted red lines showing the type of maneuver it has to make across 4 lanes of vehicle traffic to get to the left most lane before it makes a stop at Market Street to load and unload at a fairly narrow transit boarding island and makes a left turn to Market Street and sharp right turn to larkin. This particular block of the 19th polk route between market and mission has seen [inaudible] collisions of the bus side swiping other vehicles as it try tooz make the transition so the proposal we pr bringing forward today also includes a reroute of the 19th polk so that is what the blue line is showing. Instead of crossing mission and trying to merge left, it will continue straight and cross Market Street to get on to mcallister. The next slide showatize the proposed reroute. So, the dotted line with the three blue dots are existing route and so the proposed route will take it across Market Street stopping far side at market and 7th and continuing left on to mcallister, stopping at mcallister and hyde before continuing on larkin to the route. This change does effect the sichbing center area plarbly around the library where there are three stops so the stops effected are ace, hyde, market, grove and larkin and at mcallister and larkin which is in front of the Asian Art Museum. Stops passengers ride at hyde and mcallister. What we heard so far within these past 3 our 4 months we have done a tremendous amount of outreach. We have gone door to door to businesses asking about the loading needs. We try to understand the loading needs and incorporate into our design. We held a open house september 22 to inform the community of the changes and answer question people may have about the new type of facility and address the transit reroute, which had several members of the public come and express concerns about the transit reroute. Overall, we felt that the tone of the open house was receptive of the changes for the parking protected facility. It is general improvement over the existing conditions and people were pleased with the timeline of implementation. We also conducted outreach at bus stops and had staff at bus stops notifying users of the proposed changes and upcoming public hearing. Particularly, we also did a lot of stakeholder meetings, so met with the bike coalition, walk first, and Public Library. We held one on one sessions with them and also through our door to door outreach, if businesses had additional concerns we tried to work with them particularly around loading needs jujustice designs based on what we heard. There are particular loading zones we have gone back and establish boarding island and crossings so understand these businesses have concerns about the design but we have done our work to adjust design jz hopefully address their concerns. Along with that, we have maintained a mailing list to help update people on the project and our project is reported on various social media outlets. In the next steps, the items approved today our staff will continue with Detailed Design and within intents of meet thg goal of implementing the parking protected facility by may 2017 to reach the 9 month goal of the safety needs. With that, thank you and will take any questions. Thank you very much. Does the public want to speak . I have several members who turned in speaker cards on 12 and 14. Tom forten followed by cathy deluca and charles d with bike coalition. Cant read the last name. Good afternoon members the board. My name is tom norton chief at the San Francisco Public Library. Thank you for the opportunity to speak this afternoon. I like to thank the mta informing the San Francisco Public Library. Our staff and Library Users about the changes. Specifically about the rerouting. The library appreciated Public Information session held at the main library october twaerfb to accept public feedback. At the public nrfckz session and since then the library heard a good deal of feedback on the rerouting of the 19th and againstto summarize objections we received from the patrons, the public and staff, we heard that our blind and low vision user jz those with mobility disabilities benefit greatly from the current stop to the primary entrance. This provides safe and easy access for the blind and print disabled. The close est rerouted stop at mcallister and hyde require several street stop squgz less convenient. The proposed mcallister and hyde stop is less safe. [inaudible] with high crime and lower foot traffic and visibility would put riders waiting at that location for the 19th polk at greater risk especially at night. For our patrons who are scenes and families with Young Children in strollers the current stop provides fastest direct access into the safe space the library offers. It st. Felt the 19th bus stop is needed during the evening hours so patrons dont have to walk to a bus stop blocks away. By many the stop is considered safer, longer unobstructed site lines thank you very much. Cathy deluca, charles and andystarts with a d with holiday inn civicsenter. Good afternoon. Cathy deluca the prauls and Program Manager at walk sf. On behalf of walk sf and members i want to commend the sfmta moving inthproject for wrbd so quickly. Thank you staff, the protected bike laneerize so important after the death of kate slatry. The day lighting and lean reduction, the painted safety zones we are excited about all that. You wont be surprised to hear me say i think we can do more. I think this project can do more to protect all users along the corridor. Every single street that 7th and 8th intersect a high injury corridor so need to do the most we can to slow speeds and increase visibility so i is a few suggestions that i will show you. So, i will attempt to draw these on for you. We would like to see painted safety zones at every major intersection at every corner especially at corners where there are turning vehicles. Especially here when there are vehicles turning because painted safety zones decreaseor increase yielding and increase speeds. At the transit island we like to see a thumbnail because this will actually keepwe know people will walk from the sidewalk to the transit island like this and want to keep the cars away y from those folks mptd we want to make sure the bicyclist in the bike lane we know there will be pedestrians walking back and forth the bike lane to get to the transit island so want something in the lane that let the bicyclists know they have to yield to pedestrians like a raised cross walk or stripingism im running out of time because of my drawing techniques are not going well. The last thing ill say is lanes should be [inaudible] and im done. Thank you. Charles from the bike coalition. Andy from holiday inn and janet lee. Charles [inaudible] good afternoon. Community organized at inSan Francisco Bicycle Coalition and happy to speak in sporeth of the saebth and 8th Street Safety project. There are on the High Injury Network for people walk{biking despite thousands of people who bike and walk there every day. After the tragic death of a woman killed by hit and run driver at 7th and howard in june we were grateful fl mayors executive directive for achieving vision zero. We want to thank sfmta for impt lming 3 protected bike lanes within the first 9 months. The board received over wn00 letters of support and here to ask the board to approve the project and in a firm safety as a priority for the agency and city. The proposed bike improvement are a large step thip right direction making sure the people walk{biking are safe on our streets. This project will construct protected bike lane from market to folsom protected by carb parking and boarding islands. These are successful at other location. We know what work squz it will make these two streets a far better place to bike and more accessible and safe for our most vulnerable residents. Thank you board member frz your time and sfmta staff for the hard work. The outreach and Due Diligence on design is significant and [inaudible] Detailed Design. Thank you. Next speaker. Andy from the holiday inn, janet lee, followed by justin paulber. Hemo, andy [inaudible] general manager of the holiday rr inn located on 8th between market and mission. Im here to advocate for hotel pedestrian traffic that will travel back and forth across a active bike lane. We have a uniquely ignoreant population that wont know the road rules of San Francisco. While, the rules will be learned at the transit stops over time it will be confusing in the beginning but people guest from across the country and world, they will not know to look for a active bike lane between loadjug unloading and Hotel Entrance. Their back will be to oncoming traffic as you unload a trunk of a taxi cab or uber or shuttle or tour bus towards the Hotel Entrance. I do want to thank will, he shared with me revisions to thuridgeinal plan which were a big improvement. I think the safest route is the maintain a loading zone against the curb. If that is not a option, i would ask for better pedestrian right of way across inbike lane. I understand from will that bicycles would have predominant right of way accept for one cross walk add the end of the loading zone. And for greater section of pedestrian right of way granted if it is left between the loading zone and curb. Thank you. Janet lee, justin polymer, kevin carol, those are the last people who submitted a speaker card for items 12 or 13. Janet lee and justin polymer. Thank you for your time. Also want to thank sfmta for their time last week sitting down with us. Justin polymer and Property Owner of market and 7th. We have hotel under construction that has existing loading zone and existing parking. We have concerns specifically about our corner and the current safety of the plans are the number one focus is make sure the against and pedestrian and community is safe. We think we need more work in this plan before it is approved and ill hand it over to janet lee to go through specifics. Again, i want to thank everyone here and members of sfmta their time on this. We have sat with will and his team spressing concerns and want to focus on the bigger issues with we see with the current plan. Right here is the Hotel Entrance and here is restaurant and bar. We outlined here that passenger loading and unloading occurs in this area. The biggest problem we see with this, there are two really, is for a car pulling over here, unloading and loading passengers, for it to cross market it has to cross two lanes to the left very quickly within a short span. We think that creates a situation that is more unsafe than what is currently laid out. Second, if a car is standing here unloading passengers, keep in mind it takes a few seconds for guests to unload luggage and get keys, there will be a back up of traffic people coming up 7th street bicyclist, commercial vehicles and taxis trying to make a right on to Market Street here so we see that actually as a less safe scenario. I also want to point out we originally designed the hotel with the main entrance off Market Street and through better Market Street that access is obviously not there anymore and so we wnt through redesign effort to have the main entrance off 7th street and think the design needs more work before we are comfortable with it and our top priority is safety of hotel guests food and beverage space and those coming up up 7th street, cars taxis and bicyclists. Next speaker. Kevin carol is the last person to turn in a speaker card. Good afternoon. My name is kevin cairbl exectesk drether of Hotel Council of San Francisco and thank the mta work wg us and holiday inn to look at the concerns we had regarding the 7th street and passenger loading and unloading. Andy did a good job. We have hundreds of people coming in and out quite often off a bus orshutting bus and crossing over a active bike lane is a concern. We feel our pedestrians will be at risk. We support vision zero and bike safety we are concerned about keep thg curb on the lane will create opportunity for pedestrians to get hit by a bike coming through. We know the new round of design creates a island which we are thankful fl and if that is the case and not going to approve keep thg bike lane away from the curb ask that you look how the pedestrian right of way is for the length the loading zone. I dont think it is practical someone not familiar with the area will come off a bus, get their luggage and walk 50 or 80 feet to cross over a cross walk across a bike lane. They will probably go across the bike lane when they back up or decide to cross. I ask if that is the plan you move forward that you please look at the pedestrian right of way and anything that can be done to help with the safety of pedestrians on that cross way right there. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Anyone else care to address the board . Questions comments . I did put a card on and unfortunate there is no requirement that people identify themselves that when i did and i said i was interested in all comments you havent called me on this one i wanted most of all to speak on. Sometimes what we call a mistake. Beg your pardon. Could you start the clock please for me . Could you start the clause please . The clock is started. I see it is at 140 and cheating me out of 2 minute because we are arguing about your procedure. Thank you for your responsiveness. We are very opposed Library Users association is very opposed to this project because it poses great dangers to pedestrians at every point. We certainly would like to see safer streets including for bicycles but it looks as though all most all of the major changes here are likely to benefit vehicle jz bicycles at expense of greater danger to pedestrian with injury and death as a possibility and we know from the stats that the director read earlier that pedestrians in the city generally speaking are much more vulnerable to injury and death. I have sent you a letter that go s into a variety of issues. Islandss are a problem for pedestrians and the additional walking from the library stop will be three blocks to the alternate stop recommended. You have not considered the dangers of increase crossings. I have calculated the number of street crossings additional per year is 4 hundred thousand by pedestrians. The library has 1. 6 million visitors, 33 thousand visits for the blind and death and children and older groups that are serving older people and there is no consideration of the demo graphics of who is in that area and using these stops that you will cut out from the Asian Art Museum and library. There is a great deal more to be said but the high injury corridor is what you are pushing the pedestrians into. Please dont approve this. Thank you. Members the boardplus it seems to me there the report has said bike improvements, parking and traffic modifications and pedestrians, it seems like these make a lot of sense and move forward with those as quickly as possible. We heard from a number of people on that one about the stop at the library in particular. Those are my thoughts, possibly concentrate on those first two and take another look at the [inaudible] thank you. Thank you for the work on this. It will be nor surprise im looking for parking protected bike lanes on 7th and 8th probably more than getting a puppy some day. That is what our riders want and that parking bike lane are kind of the ideal for what we want to see in the city t. Is also going help for jnder equity because when i ride in the city there are not as many women riding as i think we will have once we created more protected bike infrastructure. Just a couple of questions. I agree we need to talk in more depth about 19th. 7th street when we make the changes if the bus wont be turning from 7th left on to market, will that be an allowed turn for anybody because that is a very dangerous intersection and we had a wheelchair user killed there this year wasnt it . Earlier this year. Will that left be allowed for anybody onceee have done away with the muni left . That left turn from northbound 7th street to west bound market is prohibited accept for muni, taxi commercial vehicle jz bikes. So, afterif the muni changes it is going straight, will taxis and commercial vehicle jz bikes be permitted . Yes. Interesting. I dont want to hold this up but wonder if that is something we want to take a look at again if we dont see the safety increase in the intersection that we would like to seethat is a interesting one. The bike lane in front of the holiday inn i can understand the concerns of the loading i unloading of people who may not be familiar with parking protected bike lane jz green bike lanes. Will that bike lane be green i j are we doing something to call it out for people who dont understand what they are walking into to show it isnt the sidewalk . It will still have a curb up to the sidewalk so they step off a bus on to the street and then see there is a green lane or markjug then a curb . Yes, we can explore using pavement marblingings to help identify this is a bike lane. Particularly placing pavement messages along the channel. I understand the concern but also do think that we have kind of built our city for the greatest convenience of Motor Vehicles and those drivering and in this case we need to dathis for the safety and compfort of the psychalist and incumbent on the owners of the holiday inn to make sure they educate the tour bus driver jz maybe the doorman helps people get safey across the curb. I thichck that can work. I think our taxi operators will warn people, careful you are stepping into a bike lane. I dont see that as a deal breaker. I think the parking protected bike laneerize much more important. The new hotel on 7th, i hear your concerns on that one. That must have been frustrated to come up with one plan and have the streets change and have the street change again. I hope you can work with that hotel to come up with something that will work. I think people visiting in that area you will have a lot arriving by transit and cab and tmc and have so men a staying in that location that appreciate safe bike access so this a Monkey Wrench in yoir plan but think we can work with them cant we to make sure we can figure out the loading and unloading and keep our plans in place . Yes, so design especially as shoon it is flexible and the materials we are using are we can make changes. Okay good. I have no other questions. Just so look frgward to parking protected bike ways. This is a great step and fast step and appreciate your quick squurk appreciate the Mayors Office giving the push we needed. Im supportive of the projects and have a couple question squz follow up to director [inaudible] comments. I wonderingit seems suggestions walk sf had with pedestrian rightf way between islands and sidewalk might also help addressing hotel concerns. I could be wrong but just encourage to look at ways where we can make it as easy and safe as possible for cyclist in the bike ways which i really support as well as pedestrians getting safely across especially in my opinion i hope there is a way not to have to step down off a curb because i know that will be really hard for a lot of different people with disabilities, so i hope that we can come up with design solution that will address the concerns and sound like they may overlap. I appreciate the efts looking at Detailed Design making sure that the boarding islands will be accessible. I think thats it. Sorry, one more thingi would like us to support or look into restricting the left turn on Market Street. One the reasons im on balance in sporebt of the reroute of the 19 is for eliminating that left turn on Market Street. I think it is support for the bus not to have to do the crazy going over 4 lanes of traffic and making that left so if we can look at that i know that is not contingent on this vote buzz moving forward if we can restrict that left turn that would be amazing. I support both of the commentsall the comments made so far. I think figuring out the pedestrian whether regular pedestrian from buses or loading zones, maybe we dowhen they have in the red zones the turn lanes as the stripe because people can get to the turn lane that is yulthsly the red bus zoning lane so maybe there is a indication. I also thichck we have to also help educate the bicyclist because i see them get up set when people rin the bike lane and sometimes that is a unique situation we will create so if we can have harmony because i they think that causes challenges we have that people feel they are at odds with each other so whatever we can do to make it clear to the cyclist there may be people walking through or unloading through in their lane and at certain points and also figuring out design strategy around the hotel issue specifically i think that is really important. I think bike lanes against the curb are what we need the most and having spent time in copeen haighgen seen how well it works there and that is a very dense traffic city, i know that is how well save the most live jz wish we could have them all over the city quite frankly but not all our rouds will accommodate them but think that is a the wave of the future but if we figure out the design specifically around major loading zones or areas where people who need access so crossing the lanes, the best way to do indications for both the cyclist and people that will be crossing them would be the best strategy. I like daylighting ideas walk sf mentioned as well. When you have people getting off on boarding islands and having to cross a poregz of road way i get worried especially when people are rushing to catch a bus. That is quh i am the most concerned so had you ever to figure treatment tooz reduce conflict is the best. I think this is great work. I oako what some of my colleagues have said. Getting the word out about clear rules on who has the right of way in these situations if you have a loading zone or if you got people dropping off next to a protected bike lane is really important because i think there will be a lot of confusion so anything we can do to get the word out out who has the right of way. It did strike me and cant find where it was but made a note at the Senior Center where they will be able to load in the bike zone. Is that right . There are two types of loading zones thatd are prosed and very different businesses around so we were deal wg hotels and Health Clinics and so those locations i think the one you are talk about may be on 7th street and that will have a midblock crossing that will be demarcated and have the appropriate signs to focus on where people are crossing and people biking across it should yuld to those people. Really the main thing is i see a situation where someone is riged and think they have the right of way and other case thaiz think theor dont know the pedestrian maybe sthra loading vehicle that is authorized to be there so those are the things we have to make sure we have a clear idea. I have seen the treatments in other cities and they work well so feel good about it. Thank you and thank you staff for the great work and comments that were made by the folks that came. Im eager to find a solution and hope we can have you work with staff to address the concerns with the passengers in the guest in the hotel. I think it is something that we want to be able to support not inhibit. With respect to the rerouting of the 19 and the what i think you were alluding to mr. Chairman, i doopt to make sure that we are effectively making it easier for people to get where transit is supposed to take them to go in a safest way as possible so not too sure if we need to change anything in the way that the legislation we will pass needs to be stated, but i support the idea of making sure that we vetted all the concerns appropriately that have been raised by some of infolks that have concernwise rerouting the 19. The parking protect stuff, the bike lanes itself, full board like lets go with it. I know that that is the best way to ride a bicycle is when you are protected from moving traffic by the parking lane jz there are solutions to working out technicalties that im sure my colleague can attest to to get around the challenges, but one part im concerned about is the rerouting coming from some of our stakeholders. Are we talking about 19 polk next . That was part of this. The alignment makes sense but wish there was a way to preserve the stop by the library. I wonder if we do the first two elements of bike and parking and traffic modification and pedestrian and could we achieve that by taking that out for now to go back to stakeholders and see if there isnt a way to serve the library . That is lot of patrons and folks with disabilities too. Director reiskin can you respond to that . Sure. I think there is a way to do that, but let me first say these are two very significant projects together, major streets and the core part of our city. The changes proposed are pretty significant change tooz the way the streets will function and i just want to cumind will and the rest of the staff from across the agency the fact we have gotten to the opponent where we are cont plating major changes on two very significant streetss in the city and down to a few issues that i think we can deal with. With regards to the hotels we had good suggestions from the holiday inn and mr. Carol in way tooz enhance to make that work beyond what we have already changed based on the feedback so want to continue work wg them to make sure that works. And likewise with the new hotel, i think there is flexibility in terms of the size, the placement and length of the white zone and maybe other parts of the traffic flow that i think are solvable so appreciate hotels working with us on that. 19 polk it is quite a bit more challenging. Before we move to delay that part i do want to reinforce the reason that the proposal has been made is that currently as you saw in the presentation, within one block the 19 is transitioning across a very wide street. There have been numerous reported collision, which is not good for muni riders because when there is a collision there is delay. It isnt good from a safety perspective, not good for the other vehicle or vehicles involved. The second is that the 19 is one the vehicles that is making that left hand turn that a number of you spoke about as being a concerning movement as part of the Market Street safety so getting one large user of that turn off the system is another significant benefit. The following turn that the 19 needs to make which is greater than 90 degree turn from market to get to larkin is not a Great Movement for a large 40 foot bus to make despite the scale of our operators. It was not lightly that we contemplated adjusting the routing of the bus. The offboardings at grove and larkin are fairly significant and a lot of people do use that. I spoke to the city librarian who i have Great Respect for and some real concern about eliminating that stop. We also right before the meeting got a letter from supervisor cohen who represents district 10 which is where the 19 comes from urging us to reconsider that. I understand the concern. We believe what is proposed in terms of using the newly enhanced bus stop at mcallister and hyde does create for within enhancements we are proposing safe passage that isnt significantly father but not nearly as good as the access folks have to be being dropped right in front the library. So, if the board wishing i urge you approval of these items. If the board wishes to direct that we delay the implementation of the 19 polk and explore work with stakeholders to explore other alternatives we can do that. I believe by serving under item 12 letters b, c, e, and l and staff can confirm if i gotten that right. We do want to make sure that we canthere are not any great easy solution. One alternative we didnt look at is move the 19 northbound route over to 9th street which would give it a straight shot up. The downside is the busiest boarding of the 19th line is along 7th street so we need a lot more work with muni riders and stakeholders to understand what they are getting off and on to and from from bryant to market. It is a heavier usage parts of the line. That would solve the geometry issue it may not make sense in terms of riders. The trade offs before us we try to address as part of the over all safety issue, a real safety issue muni has to deal with as well. Perhaps the way forward is to not sever the items and not approve them, but go ahead and leave this all in tact, approve the whole thing and ask staff to please do what they can do make these intersections safer because i do understand the concern is patrons instead of having the stop in front of the library they have to walk up the block and cross that one intersection that has the Pioneer Monument between the library and the Asian Art Museum. That is folten. Then they have to Cross Mcallister and go down the block. Or go down fulton and left on hyde. Are there things we can do as enhance ment to the project to make those crossings safer and to make that feel better . Perhaps we can daylight those intersections. Perhaps there is something we can do to make the walk feelif you come out the side door on to fulton you go a block and a half to that stop. Other things we can do to make the block and a half feel more welcoming and more accommodating. Fulton and hyde had the cross walk upgraded and exploring daylighting. There are bulbout installations as hyde and mcallister and can upgrade the cross walks there to the high visibility Continental Cross walks can i call out the other issue as a safety . Not just these traffic conjungz but activity safety issue on the blocks. That is the issue. If yoi have gotten off on the block there perhaps we can work with dpw to take a look at there sidewalk lighting in the area because looking at it on the google maps earth view, i know there are those fikes trees that can probably make that sidewalk a bit dark to your point especially going into the winter months and in the evening. Or, go along larkin and mcallister. I dont want to give us on the rerouting on the 19th polk when i feel like that issue is solvable. When that left turn of the bus on to market and all those other vehicle left turns are such a known safety problem. I feel like this is a ombiauns situation we can probably solve with a little work on those intersection. Would you agree there is work we can do that wick make that more comfortable . Yes and believe the city is under taking a study in the Civic Center Public Realm plan so can coordinate with Planning Department and see what improvements can we made throughout that area. What ask the timeframe on rerouting of 19 polk . Is that something anticipated to be quick or take a few months to implement . So, the 19 polk reroute i think the element is the near side stop at market and saebth so could be something we implement quickly if quee get that island out of the intersection. 9th street is there a way to do a pilot for a month or something to try that . I wonderi know it is a lot of communication. I know it is interesting to know where people are going and any way to survey to figure out if the two streets make a difference like if people go closer to 9th street. If it is a function of them wanting to be on those streets. So, i think it is something we can explore if we take our Public Outreach and engagement strategy and apply to contmplation of route change. It isnt something we can do quickly. It seems like this the options here are approve everything as recommended with perhaps direction that we dont implement those aspects that would require reroute of the 19 until we do more stakeholder work, or to remove those parts of the item that relate to the reroute of the 19 and approve Everything Else and again, we would continue to work with folks to try to find alternatives which could include rerouting 19 or address the things the vice chair was speaking to. I prefer option one. I would like to approve in entirety and work towards addressing the concerns. I agree. I prefer to see elim nailt bc, e and l and return in about a month. Give a chancethese are significant stakeholders. The library, supervisor and people we heard from. My preference. I would support thatin general and mentioned this observe when i heard about the issue is our pub lb facility making sure there is access. It makes sense this is Public Library to have supportsame thing with schools and designing the networks to make sure the core public facilities are supported and accessed makes the most sense and so anything we can do toi dont how much time you need to get stuff done here, but thats a good question. A month you have time . We may need a little bit time more than that. We are getting into the holidays so the ability to engage folks may be more difficult. In any case we would be able to move forward with the rest of this soonjure would need to correct if you go that route it is in addition to not approving bce and l we need to make remove language from parts of d and h as well which i can read and share with the secretary. I like to make that as a motion we approve everything with exception of bcel and d and h whatever you need to do with that and intent is come back i say no later than 2 months. Maybe give us 3 . 3 months i think it will be more reasonable. Ill second that. If i could just make sure everyone is clear on what we are doing for the record. Bcel and with d we strike the language the second half of d which is from the words larkin street on. The first time larkin street appears from that to the end of d we would be striking. With h, we strike the first part where it says 7th street east side from market to stephen son. We have motion and second. Any further discussion . If i may, it is not very often that i just dont agree with what the great work staff has done here and i deeply appreciate all the work that has gone into this so far and appreciate the idea of trying to expedite Transit Service in a way that is safer for everyone else and to curb the debhavior that is dangerous. That left on market and right back on to larkin is challenging for sure but as a transit rider having those stops in front of those facilities is really nice. It is one of the nicer experiences as a transit rider i have experienced. It is like the way transit should be. It is like Transit Needs to go where people want to go. It would be a shame to have to go to this route to change that and make it less convenient because as nice as we make it is less convenient for transit riders to access these facilities. Because the rest of the city cant get it together to make a safe environment for pedestrians and what have you, seems like we could do better for our transit riders. I would like to give Due Diligence to this just a little more. Im not saying im opposed to this when it comes back but would like a little more thought and conversation to go into particularly responding to the supervisors concerns. This is in her district but the route goes through her district and lot of those riders probably use this line so want to make sure whee vetted this as murch as possible so appreciate the motion and happy to second it and again it is not at all a disservice or a questioning of the good work staff has done because this is the exactly the type of thinking we need to have to have these good conversations. Thank you all for this opportunity. Appreciate that. The intent is little more time to do something more creative but if it comes back i am prepared to air on the side affsafety and support the project. Hoping all the stakeholders get engaged in this and come back in 3 months. All in favor say aye . Opposed . Ayes have it. That is motion on the amendment. You need a motion on the item as aamended. I second the motion. Say aye. The ayes have it. Mr. Chairman you need a motion and a second regarding item 13. Motion on that . Motion to move. Second . All in favor say aye. Ayes have it. Thank you. With item 14 removed that concludes all the business brf you today